Tuesday, November 07, 2006

I've got some sh*t to say.

It's about Oprah.

I know everyone is talking about this. And, I highly recommend you go check it out.

I mean, as a PR person, I have to say I truly appreciate the brilliance of the Jenny Craig public relations team. Well fucking done, bitches -- whoever was in charge of pep-talking Kirstie Alley into that bikini did a great job of distracting her while you pumped her diet coke with Xanax. She seemed quite relaxed and enthusiastic in her appearance on Oprah.

But Oprah, as someone who is mesmerizing the (female) American public with your brown-eyed judgemental stare, dispensing confident tough love interspersed with hokey spiritualism, I think you have a certain responsibility.

Oprah, I'm begging you, stop being such a fuckwad.

Case in point, the slideshow I linked to, above.

Allow me to reproduce it, below, with my own interpretation:

First, Kirstie Alley comes on to shill for Jenny Craig. I suspect she could lose another 8 pounds or so if she would remove her mascara, but Oprah kindly abstains from commenting on that.

Then, Kirstie comes out, aided only by a flowy wrap and, as I mentioned before, a nice Xanax mickey. Women in the audience are duly impressed at her show of confidence and inspired by her true weight loss story. They cheer.

Here's a nice shot of Kirstie, her celeb pals, and the ghost of L. Ron Hubbard going shopping.

All fine and good. Kirstie’s all about the positivity, Oprah’s all about “girlfriend! You’re great!” and the audience is all, “WOOOOT!”

But then, it gets a little fucked up. Here, we have a photograph of a very unhappy-looking person and her creepy, creepy dad.

According to the copy, this sensitive man said the following:

"Does it bother me when we're out in public that Jill's overweight? It does. I'll be honest," said Kirk, Jill's father. "I'm ashamed of her weight, but I love my daughter dearly."

See? She’s unhappy because she’s fat. Her dad really loves her and therefore IS ASHAMED TO BE SEEN WITH HER IN PUBLIC.

Is it just me, or does he bear a striking resemblance to John Mark Karr? Let’s see:

Hm. You be the judge.

Anyway, so, then we jump to the miraculous follow up. Guess what, everybody? Unhappy girl had radical surgery to transform her internal organs! Because she was physically unable to eat, she experienced a dramatic weight loss! Now that she is a socially-acceptable human being, she understand that her father’s behavior was not out of hateful, shallow self-loathing, it was out of LOVE! See? She was BAD. Now she is GOOD.

(I have to admit, she’s gorgeous. I think it’s the hair.)

Okay. So, right. Where were we?

Celebrity shilling, check. Unneccissary skin baring? Check. Justification of millions of women’s self hatred and reinforcement of the (false) assumption that if I could just be thinner (richer, sexier, hairier, insert –er here-er), daddy will love me? Check.

What’s next?

Right.

THE HOLOCAUST.

Here, Oprah visits the ultimate fat camp, Auschwitz.

Note her duly concerned, deeply moved, still judgmental stare:

Seriously.

Can you imagine a less appropriate segue?

I was going to put some riff here about the production staff meeting, blah, blah, but nothing I can say is scathing enough for this.

From there, Oprah gives a woman her dream house and moves on to some other forms of genocide.

At this point, the whole slideshow becomes anticlimactic.

Blah blah, Genocide, Blah blah, dream house, then a nice little segment about bras, as part of Oprah’s campaign to ensure American women are sporting the correct undergarments.

Finally, there’s this:

OMG! Bono! I have forgotten about genocide already, because they’re TOTALLY GOING SHOPPING AT THE GAP.

Because there’s this red thing, that Bono is part of, and you can buy things at the Gap.

And it’s charitable.

For something. Something probably to do with Bill Gates but who cares? This shit is cute.

4 comments:

Anonymous
said...

haha classic.

oprah is so weird.

what a random show.

ps: kirstie alley (or however you spell her name) still looks pretty chunky. but she looks fit. kind of. i didn't see any ripples so she looks good to me.lol ghost of l ron hubbard. i laughed so long and so hard at that.